Emmanuel Macron’s government presents a new immigration bill on Tuesday, 29e in four decades, claiming to want to reconcile “firmness” and “humanity” to obtain a consensus with the opposition on this still inflammable subject in France.
This new text comes in a context of nagging debates on immigration, in France as in all European countries, and a few weeks after a crisis between Rome and Paris about the reception of migrants in distress on board a ship. humanitarian aid in the Mediterranean.
It constitutes a political challenge for the French executive, between the right and the extreme right accusing it of being lax, and the left worried about the hard line led by the Minister of the Interior, Gérard Darmanin, from the ranks of the right.
France must be able to “say who we want” and “who we do not want” to welcome, summed up the Prime Minister, Élisabeth Borne, opening the debate, considering that “zero immigration is neither desirable nor possible, not more realistic than unregulated immigration is”.
Associations for the defense of migrants are concerned for their part about a “continuous deterioration of rights”, in particular the right to asylum. Activists and leaders of fifteen associations gathered on Tuesday in front of the National Assembly to denounce the government’s migration policy, deemed “hostile”.
After Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne, who is due to deliver a speech to the deputies in the afternoon on France’s migration policy, several ministers, including the two authors of the bill, Gérald Darmanin and the Minister of Labor, Olivier Dussopt (from the left), will follow one another to defend this text which must be officially presented at the beginning of 2023.
“Better integration and better expulsion”
It essentially comprises measures aimed at making deportation procedures more efficient, a “structural” reform of the asylum system in the service of speeding up procedures, as well as some measures in favor of integration, in particular through the regularization of undocumented workers.
“It is a question of better integrating and better expelling”, summed up Tuesday morning on France Info radio Gérald Darmanin. “We want those who work, not those who plunder,” he said.
The project includes two key measures: on the one hand, the issuance of an obligation to leave French territory (OQTF) as soon as an asylum application is rejected at first instance, without waiting for a possible appeal; on the other hand, the creation of a residence permit for undocumented workers in “shortage jobs”, which lack manpower.
“We need a policy of firmness and humanity faithful to our values. It is the best antidote to all the extremes that feed on anxieties, ”said Emmanuel Macron in an interview this weekend with the newspaper. The Parisian.
A “fuzzy” bill
The debate without a vote in the Assembly will be followed by another, on December 13, in the Senate.
The right and the far right denounce a project that is not repressive enough, accusing the government in particular of wanting to introduce a wave of “massive” regularizations with the title “jobs in tension”.
On this inflammable subject, the government is ready to discuss the “criteria”.
“How much seniority will it take on national soil? Should we set quotas? For the moment, the text does not provide for it”, described Gérald Darmanin, who says the government is “open” to parliamentary debate.
Another issue under discussion is the expulsion of foreigners who disturb public order. This subject was revived by a terrible news item, the murder in mid-October of a teenager by an Algerian national in an irregular situation, which the far right seized in particular to link immigration and crime.
To the chagrin of the left and associations, the executive took up this theme, noting the “overrepresentation of foreigners in acts of delinquency”.
But most dailies, right and left, Tuesday noted the “inconsistency” or “vagueness” of the executive’s project.
“Stuck between liberalism and identity tensions, the French government is struggling to convince with a clear line”, considers the Swiss daily Timeconsidering that the text is a “beautiful illustration of” at the same time “Macronian”.
In 2021, according to INSEE figures, seven million immigrants lived in France, i.e. 10.3% of the total population. Among them, 2.5 million, or 36% of them, had acquired French nationality since their arrival.